Naomi Watts, who stars in the drama 'The Impossible,' is also a busy mother. / Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY

by Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY

by Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY

NEW YORK ‚?? Naomi Watts has an aversion to being immersed in roiling bodies of water.

Oh, and she's terrified, understandably so, of dying and leaving her two young sons behind. It all goes back to her childhood. Watts' dad, English road manager and sound engineer Peter Watts, passed away in 1976, when his daughter was 8, and her memories of him are a blank.

So you might wonder why Watts decided to tackle the lead in The Impossible, a grueling, harrowing film that required her to be soaked for six long weeks ‚?? and had her playing a real-life woman who gets separated from two of her three sons after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami destroys their resort.

"I was struck by (my character's) sense of courage and heroism. It's deeply impressive. She hates to be thought of that way, by the way. It's so miraculous that her family survives. She came so close to dying and she was certain she would. She had to believe that the last thing she left behind was this message to her son, which was to help others," says Watts, 44, of playing Dr. Maria Belon, who is vacationing in Thailand with her husband (Ewan McGregor) and their trio of boys when the tsunami hits and splits them up.

"Her performance is so stunning. The experience of watching the film makes you step back and reassess the human connection," says her friend Kate Hudson, who had just hosted a screening of the movie. "She's a very real, authentic person. She loves her craft but she's really focused on her family and her boys. She's an amazing mother. I love watching her and talking to her about why she makes certain choices ‚?? she's an intelligent actress and makes choices based on the right things."

On screen and in real life, miraculously, the entire family survived. But the positive ending aside, the film, shot on location in Thailand, was every bit as laborious for Watts as you might imagine. She was immersed in water tanks for the close-ups and underwater scenes to avoid an over-reliance on digital effects.

"We all know that water has a bad reputation. It lived up to that reputation. This was six weeks in those water tanks. I don't have great feelings about water because I had an experience when I was about 14 and my family got caught in a riptide. I have a fear of waves," says Watts. "I found it very, very hard. I had this respiratory problem that wouldn't go away."

She doesn't begin to equate her experience with that of actual survivors. But having her gasp for air did give the film an aura of realism. "We were struggling for breath and struggling to stay above water. It makes the dramatic effect so much more believable," she says.

Not that Watts struggles with authenticity. Watch her on screen, and Watts seems to embody the women she plays from within, with no regard for vanity or likability.

"She has this wonderful duality of being able to access her emotions all the time but never losing control of that," says Laurie Collyer, who directs her in next year's indie Sunlight Jr.

"She has a lot of her heart. She's really surprising as an actor, the choices she makes. She's so subtle."

And she's passionate. Everyone who knows the actress comments on what an adoring, loving ‚?? Watts would say, with a laugh, neurotic and overprotective -- mother she is. She's the one, Watts giggles, who worries about her boys Sasha, 5, and Kai, 4, being injured while playing, while her longtime partner and their dad, Liev Schreiber, is more the daredevil. Her greatest, most persistent phobia, the one that's embedded in her, is not seeing her kids grow up.

"That is horrifying. That's a big fear I live with and I think that's from having lost a parent. It feels real to me and I hate that feeling, even though I'm completely used to it because it's all I've ever known. I want my children to know both their parents," she says, of the early death of her father. "I have no memories. There's literally no photographs, hardly. Maybe four or five of us all together. It was a different time."

It's one of the reasons that Watts loathes being away from her kids. The Impossible was shot two years ago and her sons were with her on location, playing on the beach and frolicking amid the hermit crabs. Having them there grounded Watts, because she makes a concertedeffort to never bring the office home with her.

"I do have this promise to myself that when I go through the door, I'm there 100%. Even if I'm fighting fatigue, when I'm in their presence, I want to be present. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing well at it. Sometimes I feel like I'm scraping by. I find myself at work watching the clock, because I have to get home," she says.

And now here she is, in uptown Manhattan, eating overpriced pasta with shrimp, drinking sparkling water, and discussing the film while also showing off a photo of her oldest son on a bike with his dad. It's awards season. And Watts isn't immune to the frantic prognostications of who's on top this week, or talk that her performance is one of the year's standouts. She just earned a Critics Choice nomination for The Impossible. But glad-handing doesn't come naturally to her, even though Watts is no stranger to the Oscar circuit, having been nominated for 2003's 21 Grams.

"That's not me. I really wrestle with everything I say to the press. Nothing comes out easily. I'm always concerned I'm going to say the wrong thing," says Watts.

Indeed, she can come across as cool, aloof, at first. But Watts, once she knows you, opens up. "She's very shy. So at the beginning, it seems like she's cold. It's not coldness. She's a very warm person. The truth is that as much as you stay with her, you discover she's a very warm person," says The Impossible director Juan Antonio Bayona.

She's also ambitious, but not hungry. There's a difference.

"It does feel like it's a good place right now. I'm very proud of The Impossible," she says. "It's so weird. In Toronto, a couple of people said, 'Welcome back.'"

The statement puzzled Watts, who has worked more or less non-stop. In 2010 alone, she appeared in Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, played slick spy Valerie Plame in Fair Game, and a driven corporate lawyer in Mother and Child. Last year, there was the little-seen Dream House and Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar.

"I took a bit of time off when I was pregnant and three or four months after, the same with each baby. Not every film is successful or seen... I have three other films coming out next year," she says.

"The roles are much richer," she says of what's offered to her as she's gotten older.

But still.

"I saw a movie I'm in is going to Sundance. I'm playing a mother of a 20-something-old. It was hard. This is going to change things. It has to be reinvented all the time. There are days when I feel 100 years old and I'm an inch away from doing something," she says, sighing.

It's sadly something that makes her stand out. Directors laud Watts for being one of the few actresses in her age group who look like they should, as opposed to a nipped and tucked and stretched cast member on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

"In Sunlight Jr., there are some scenes where she sort of looks haggard and she's supposed to. It's hard for any woman. She's just brave. She has a willingness to take risks in her work. In reality, she's gorgeous and luminous," says Collyer.

The next few months will be family-centric for Watts. Schreiber is shooting Showtime's Ray Donovan in Los Angeles, so she and the kids are spending four months on the West Coast after celebrating Christmas here. Mom and Dad take turns working and have only overlapped twice in eight years, she reports. So how does she do it, with two kids at home and two dueling careers?

"There are days when I feel like superwoman. And there are days when I can't do this, I feel like I'm not going to survive," she says.